Staycations That Will Lower Your Carbon Footprint

*This is a collaborative post.

The climate crisis has become an issue of increasing concern to the UK public; three quarters of Brits have worries about climate change, and it is showing. Many are making more sustainable choices with groceries, energy and even holidays, shirking international travel by plane for staycations instead. But if you’re struggling for ideas on how you would take a sustainable staycation, look no further – here are four staycation ideas to lower your carbon footprint.

Camping, or Glamping

Rather than flying out to a distant location, you could instead pick a site closer to home, and take yourself on a camping trip. Your carbon footprint would be as low as the fuel used to find your campsite – and a tent affords you the complete freedom of camping anywhere! The National Trust’s rewilding programme is restoring old farm land, once scarred by its use to bring up livestock, to its natural beauty, providing a beautiful place to relax and a fitting surrounding for your sustainability mission. Just make sure to take the essentials and leave your campsite the way you found it.

Caravanning

Just like camping, caravanning offers you the luxury of picking just about anywhere to pitch up and stay a while – whether a campsite on a rural farm or simply a lay-by in the peak district. But hauling a caravan can still have an impact on the environment, owing to the fuel you’ll be using to travel around. As such, you could instead create your own form of sustainable escape with the purchase of a static caravan at any number of beautiful locations in the UK. These caravans come with all modern conveniences, acting as a home from home – and more often than not run on sustainable electricity, making them the most eco-friendly route you can take. Static caravans are made to last, and have a much longer lifespan than tents, which are also commonly made with polluting plastics that do not biodegrade. For the complete off-grid experience, you could invest in solar panels to make your holiday completely carbon-neutral.

Cottages

Cottages in rural villages also offer a unique way to spend a holiday and manage your carbon footprint in the process. In harder-to-reach settlements, not only is the air clearer and the landscape breath-taking, but the resources used to live are far less harmful to the environment. Any cottages you hire out to stay in would have wood-burning fires and stoves, and many may not even be plugged into the grid! You can unplug from society, while enjoying local hospitality and paying into the local economy all the while.

Sustainable Hotels

If you don’t want to tread too far off the beaten track for your next UK holiday, you can instead seek out the future of domestic travel: the sustainable hotel. By finding a hotel which offsets its carbon footprint, or has its own sustainable energy sources, you can rest easy in the knowledge that your pampering sessions aren’t costing the environment a thing. And for sustainable hotels in bigger cities, public transport links will be numerous, keeping your travel footprint low to boot.